A Treatise on the Geographical Scale of Agglomeration Externalities and the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem

Martijn Burger, Frank Oort and Bert van der Knaap

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: The modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) refers to the sensitivity of statistical research results to the initial spatial nomenclature used. Despite a substantial literature in the related field of geography on the potential influence of the MAUP, the urban economic modeling tradition has not paid much attention to this issue. In this article, we test to what extent the MAUP moderates the effect of agglomeration externalities on areal sectoral employment growth by varying the initial geographical scale of analysis. Using spatial cross-regressive modeling in which we account for spatial spillover effects of agglomeration externalities, we find different effects of agglomeration forces across geographical scales. As the MAUP is a theoretical as well as a methodological problem, research should not only work with proper statistical specifications of spatial agglomeration models incorporating different geographical scales, but also relate this more explicitly to hypotheses concerning the geographical scale at which agglomeration externalities operate.

Keywords: MAUP; agglomeration externalities; employment growth; spatial econometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C35 J11 M M13 O32 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-11-14
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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